North American Lineage servers permanently closing June 29

NCsoft has announced over on the Lineage site that the North American game servers will be closing for good on June 29.

According to the post, the 'franchise is "no longer profitable," and unused time will be refunded to account holders which have been applied to registers users.

"After much deliberation, NCsoft has made the difficult decision to shut down Lineage servers in its Western markets," reads the post. "Unfortunately, after more than 10 years, the original Lineage franchise is no longer financially viable in the West. On June 29, 2011, at the normal maintenance time, all the original Lineage NA servers maintained by NCsoft will shut down permanently.

"As of today, no new accounts can be created. We will no longer charge anyone whose account is set to recurring billing, and Time Cards can no longer be used to add additional game time. We have reactivated all existing accounts in good standing, and everyone can play for free* for the remaining time that the servers are open.

"We are committed to refunding any unused game time that might have already been applied to your account. If you are due a refund, refunds will be made automatically back to the method of payment that was originally used in most cases. Please see our refund policy for details.

"We will not be making any additional content updates, but we do have US Ruleset changes and lots of great events planned for the next two months. We want to give you every opportunity to make all of your remaining Lineage dreams come true. We hope that everyone will stick around to have fun with the game you love in the time we have left."

However, while sad, there is a bit of a silver lining, as NCsoft plans to offer the faithful a chance to play its other games for free."

"We know that we have incredibly loyal fans that have stood by us for the past ten years," the post continued. "As painful as it was, as a business, we had to make a very difficult, but necessary, decision. We thank you for your continued support. We want you to know that we will be offering you a chance to try other NCsoft games for free to express our gratitude for your years of loyalty to Lineage."

Thanks, MMORPG.